.comment: 1776? Yeah, Right.

Let Facts Be Submitted to a Candid World

March 2, 2001

By
Dennis E. Powell

So now we have Richard M. Stallman likening the GNU General Public
License to the Declaration of Independence.

Well, the GPL is written in English, and it was composed in the United
States, and it has a few words in common with the work of Jefferson,
Franklin, and Adams, but to liken the two documents is a laughable
exercise in megalomania.

In his little essay "The GNU GPL and the American Way," Stallman tells
us, "The Free Software Movement was founded in 1984, but its inspiration
comes from the ideals of 1776." This is true if the inspiration is
derived from a desire to confound those ideals.

Let's take a look at 1776. There were two extraordinary things that
happened that year. The one that instantly comes to mind, at least to
the minds of Americans, is the passage and publication of the
Declaration of Independence. The other, just as important in its own
way, was publication of "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the
Wealth of Nations," by the Scottish economist Adam Smith -- the first
great argument for free markets. We can pretty safely assume that
Stallman was not speaking of Smith when he wrote about the "ideals of
1776." Smith presaged much in the industrial revolution that was just
then getting its start; it would go on to alter society and raise the
standard of living more, and in different ways, than had anything that
had come before it. For any of this to work, private rather than
community effort was needed, as was private rather than community risk.
If someone sought to go into business, he would risk his own money in an
effort to enrich himself. If he succeeded, the results were his. If he
failed, the losses were his, too.

Indeed, as Robert Heilbroner detailed in his excellent, "The Worldly
Philosophers," prior to 1776 much that we now accept as commonplace did
not exist. The profit motive, as we have come to know it, was a new
idea; it would have been folly for most ordinary people even to think of
it. There certainly were people seeking to amass fortunes and to do good
things with them, but these were relatively few, and remarkable.

But Stallman is not talking about these things. Instead, he seeks,
pretty comically, to cloak the GPL in the Declaration of Independence.

That noble document was written largely in defense of private property
and free trade. The GPL was not.